Kanaan Wins Pit Duel, Race

June 29, 2008|By MARTY O'BRIEN, mobrien@dailypress.com - 247-4963

RICHMOND — For most of Saturday night, the SunTrust Indy Challenge at Richmond International Raceway looked more like a demolition derby than an open-wheel car race. But when it counted most, the IndyCar Series event became a drag race.

Tony Kanaan won the side-by-side duel, beating Helio Castroneves off of pit road for the lead on lap 229 by less than a foot. Kanaan pulled away to his first victory of the season and his first win at RIR in six tries.

The pit-road pass was impressive, but probably wasn't decisive. Kanaan started on the pole, had the fastest car the first 71 laps and was so much faster than Castroneves on the final 72 laps that he won by almost five seconds.

Series points leader Scott Dixon was third, with Dan Wheldon and Oriol Servia rounding out the top five. Danica Patrick finished sixth on RIR's 3/4-mile oval for the second consecutive year.

"It's the first (win) of the year so I'm pretty sure everyone is happy," Kannan said. "Now we've got a lot of points to catch."

Kanaan gained 18 points on Dixon but still trails him by 82. Dixon leads with 351 points, followed by Castroneves (308), Wheldon (299) and Kanaan (269).

Kanaan led a race-high 166 laps, but conceded that his Andretti Green Honda Dallara might not have been the best in the field. He felt that teammate Marco Andretti might have been a little better.

But Andretti got bitten by the race-record ninth, and final, caution of the night. On lap 116, Andretti passed Kanaan for second and then Jaime Camara for the lead. Camara had led since lap 71, when Kanaan had pitted for four tires and fuel.

Andretti remained in the lead until lap 206, when he pitted under green for fuel. He ran 135 laps without pitting, thanks to five cautions that allowed him to conserve fuel.

But by pitting under green he lost two laps and dropped to 12th. He would have made up those laps had the cars in front of him had to pit under green as well.

They didn't.

Camara, who had run in the top three much of the night after starting 24th, spun out and hit the wall on lap 218. So the leaders pitted under yellow, setting up the drag race between Kanaan and Castroneves.

"I think Marco would've won the race," Kanaan said. "I was strong, but at one point he was really strong. Unfortunately, he got caught up in pit strategy."

Andretti finished ninth.

It could have been worse. More than half of the field got caught up in wrecks.

The merger between the IndyCar Series and the Champ Car Series swelled the field to 26 cars. A year ago, only 19 cars raced at RIR and only four cautions resulted.

It took just 68 laps to produce four cautions, and more than a third of the race (102 laps) was run under yellow. Many of the wrecks took place on restarts.

But that was where Castroneves was at his best. That was especially true after pitting.

"It was a lot of fun," he said. "I had a lot of opportunities to pass a lot of cars."

But he couldn't pass Kanaan in the drag off of pit road.

"My car was really good on new tires," Castroneves said. "But Andretti Green was definitely more consistent on the longer runs, and that's why they won the race."